“You’d much better come with us, father,” said Tom. “You know you will feel awfully lonely without us.”
“I would sooner be lonely than live in that barrack in Grosvenor Square in January,” said he; “besides, the house will be full of models and clay. I believe we are all clay, and I don’t want to associate with models.”
“There will soon be clay models too,” added Tom. “I’m going to work hard.”
His father looked meditatively out of the window. The carriage had come round, and they were putting in the luggage.
“If all men had to work and all women had to weep, every self-respecting man would cut his throat this moment, and every self-respecting woman would drown herself in her tears. What charming things family parties would be, you know! Perhaps it’s right for you to work, though I don’t see why you should; but don’t let May weep. Ah, here she is! Well, good-bye. I suppose one or both of you will be coming down here soon.”
May’s inclination had been to stop down in the country longer, but Tom represented that he really had to begin to work at once, and that no one in the world—not even himself—could work in the country. The Golden Age was going to return—the earth was again to be peopled with gods and goddesses; a shining procession was to begin to walk out of his studio. The grand style was possible. While the Hermes stood still and smiled at the baby on his arm nothing was impossible. Art ruled the world. He thought of the old paradox that nature copied art, and found that it contained its grain of truth. Until Turner painted golden liquid sunsets, they did not exist, or at any rate no one saw them, whereas now any one who had seen a first-rate Turner could find one on any clear summer’s evening in the country; and until he saw the Hermes he did not know there were such people, but as a matter of fact he met half a dozen of them now in every street in London. They were there all the time, but one had to be taught how to see them. And he finished up with “Ars longa.”
This last argument appealed to May. Tom was ready to begin working; it was criminal to delay. The herald of the Golden Age, the Iris who was to bring it down from heaven, was a statue of Demeter mourning for her lost child. Tom had already made a small clay sketch of it, and he could wait no longer. Besides, there was Wallingthorpe to be confuted. That eminent artist had used all his powers of eloquence in abuse, persuasion, and lament over Tom, who had heard him unmoved, and merely asked him as a personal favour to wait until he saw what could be done. Wallingthorpe talked about civilization and advance, and the torchlight procession of artists who ran and handed on the flaring brand from the one to the other until it reached the goal. The torch was in Tom’s hands, and instead of running on with it towards the goal, he was deliberately running backwards and laying it at the feet of Praxiteles. It was a Vandalism.
Tom roared with laughter over that brilliant tirade, and vowed he would make a heroic group, in which he himself was kneeling before Praxiteles and handing him the torch of Art, while Wallingthorpe in a frock coat and tall hat was trying to snatch it away. It was a fine subject. Many thanks for the suggestion.
So May yielded, and paid farewell visits among all the old parishioners, and one snowy afternoon in January, as has been stated, they drove away from Applethorpe up to London, and Tom started his work as an artist seriously and with set purpose.